Dangling and painting

Painting the commlock is a bit of a challenge. There's no base to sit it on while spraying, or at least nothing that isn't supposed to be covered in paint. I suppose I could have worked one side at a time, but that takes time and I'm doing this between other jobs. 

A little experimenting showed I could wedge some garden wire (I spray in the garage, this stuff is handy) in between the fold-out plastic bits of my spray hood. Then bend a noose and hang the somewhat heavy model on its belt clip.

Jiggling around avoids any unpainted "shadows" and if the inside of the clip doesn't get a proper coat, I can live with that. 

First up is spraying with grey car primer. This isn't a bad match for the TV version, but I prefer to top coat with paint that I can apply with a brush for touching up, so the choice is Humbrol 64, the same as unfitted 16 ton mineral wagons. (It's probably wrong for those too, but I don't care)

After drying, comes masking time. 

Loads of tape to try and get the sides of the buttons, a coat of matt black and then the chance to do the touch -up thing as my masking was back to its useless self. Still, I'm getting quite good at cutting colours accurately with a brush...